Charlton: Disgruntled
Engineer

John Douglas Charlton was a Lockheed
Corporation engineer in Sunnyvale, California. He was forced into early retirement from
Lockheed in 1989 as part of a company-wide personnel reduction. Charlton fit the profile
of a disgruntled employee. Upset by the circumstances of his departure, he took with him
Top Secret documents relating to "Sea Shadow," the Navy's stealth ship
prototype, and the "Captor Project," related to land mines which release
anti-submarine torpedoes.

Several years later, Charlton began trying to
sell this information to friendly Western governments. Lockheed learned of this in 1993
and immediately informed the FBI. Charlton was arrested in 1995 after meeting five times
with an undercover FBI agent posing as a representative of the French government. A search
of his residence turned up a cache of illegal guns and the Top Secret documents. According
to the prosecuting attorney, the documents would have enabled any nation to discover some
of the workings of a Top Secret program.